Why You Shouldn't Wait Until Your First Job to Build Your Personal Brand

Every company wants people who represent it with genuine conviction. Yet few people talk about the fact that being able to represent yourself is just as important.

This was exactly what we explored with first-year students in the Business Leadership Programme during the Ambassador Practice course at NEWTON University. And the results genuinely surprised me.

Great employer branding starts with people, not campaigns

When you think about companies that people genuinely want to work for, it's rarely a marketing campaign or a careers page that makes the difference.

It's the colleague who talks passionately about their work. The manager who recommends the company because they truly believe in it. The people who identify so strongly with their organisation that they naturally represent it even outside working hours.

As someone working in recruitment, I see this every day. Companies with people like this have a hiring advantage that simply can't be bought. These ambassadors aren't created by internal advocacy programmes. They are the result of employees genuinely believing in where they work.

What if you started thinking about this much earlier?

That question became the foundation of the Ambassador Practice course.

Together with our first-year students, we didn't just discuss what it means to represent a company. More importantly, we explored what it means to represent yourself.

Who are you? What genuinely interests you? What do you want the professional world to know about you before you even enter it?

LinkedIn was simply the tool. A place where students could answer these questions publicly and begin shaping their professional identity long before anyone expected them to.

The blank page everyone is afraid of

At the beginning of the semester, most students found LinkedIn intimidating.

'What could I possibly write? I don't know enough yet. I'm not an expert.'

This feeling is far from unusual. I hear the same concern from professionals with decades of experience.

But expertise isn't about knowing everything. It's about having your own perspective and being willing to share it.

That's exactly why building a personal brand early in your career is so valuable. Your perspective is fresh. It's not yet shaped by years of routine, which makes it authentic and worth hearing.

Watching students gradually realise this and begin writing about topics they genuinely care about was, for me as their lecturer, the most rewarding part of the entire semester.

Why it matters to employers

Candidates who can clearly explain who they are and what motivates them immediately stand out.

Not because they know more than everyone else, but because they come across as self-aware, purposeful and intentional. They communicate confidently, understand their field and, most importantly, know why they do what they do.

If you start developing these skills in your first year at university, you won't enter the job market as complete beginners. You'll enter it as people who have already started building something meaningful.

And that's a difference employers notice.

Conclusion

This semester showed me that first-year students have far more to say than they often believe.

Sometimes all they need is the opportunity and a little encouragement to start talking about the things they genuinely care about.

As a lecturer, I'd much rather see a LinkedIn post written in someone's authentic voice than a perfectly completed LinkedIn profile.

The Ambassador Practice course at NEWTON University isn't just about helping students become more visible. It's about helping them discover what they actually have to share.

Zuzana Bedřich works in HR and recruitment and leads the Ambassador Practice course within the Business Leadership Programme at NEWTON University.